


Something Faithful and Mad

by yourestuckinmyhead



Category: The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, I don't want to tag because that will spoil!, It's twisty and turny, but vague and prose-y, so if you don't like that I'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 11:36:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8711116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourestuckinmyhead/pseuds/yourestuckinmyhead
Summary: She screams. He laughs.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The poem that inspired this story and the title.
> 
> \--------------------------------  
> touching you i say(it being Spring  
> and night)”let us go a very little beyond  
> the last road—there’s something to be found”
> 
> and smiling you answer “everything  
> turns into something else,and slips away….  
> (these leaves are Thingish with moondrool  
> and i’m ever so very little afraid”)  
> i say  
> “along this particular road the moon if you’ll  
> notice follows us like a big yellow dog. You
> 
> don’t believe? look back.(Along the sand  
> behind us,a big yellow dog that’s….now it’s red  
> a big red dog that may be owned by who  
> knows)  
> only turn a little your. so. And
> 
> there’s the moon,there is something faithful and mad”
> 
>  
> 
> –e.e.cummings

Her eyes follow the path of the sun, her ears listen to the song of birds.

 

She’s been awake for hours.

 

(It’s morning.)

 

She’s waiting for him to wake up.

____

 

She’s seen him, prowling around the town he promised to leave not quite a year ago.

 

(So much for promises.)

 

She pretends he isn’t there at all.

 

(But he is he is he is)

____

 

He shows up in her school, at the grill, in her house, at the park.

 

In the forest, kissing his way down her chest.

 

On that park bench, begging once again for her to know him.

 

In her bedroom, whispering that the world could be hers, all hers and no one else's.

 

Basically, he’s doing a tour of his greatest hits.

 

She’s sick of it.

 

(She missed him.)

____

 

The voicemail, the one that sits in her phone, the only way she can hear his voice, all she has left to hold onto?

 

She deletes it.

 

….

 

He manages to hang around.

____

 

Some days he haunts the air she breathes.

 

All the other days, she doesn’t inhale.

 

It’s easier that way.

____

 

She screams.

 

“Everything was _perfect_ before you came here!”

 

He laughs.

 

“Open your eyes, dear. Things have never been more wrong.”

____

 

He’s on her front porch, with a smug grin on his face and his hands behind his back.

 

He isn’t going to leave.

 

Not with that look and those hands, that’s his winning pose.

 

The only time he will ever appear smug is when the game is already won or he is terrified of losing.

 

(He never losing.)

  


She leaves him out there, and he is pulled away by the rising sun before she has to turn him away.

 

(He should be terrified.)

____

 

“He won’t leave me alone!”

 

“Caroline, who?”

____

 

People used to ask her about him.

 

Why he always seemed to hang around, what she did to keep him interested, how she managed to ensnare him so completely, so incredibly.

 

“I didn’t do anything,” She always answered them.

 

It’s the truth.

 

(and a lie a lie a lie)

____

 

_She is a wildfire and a cooling stream of water all in one, she is a hurricane and bright sunshine, a monster and the picture of innocence. She is both the destroyer and the savior of all things, she does not heal without hurting or give without taking._

 

_She is nothing if not fair._

____

 

She asks him, sometimes.

 

Why he always seems to hang around, what’s so special about her, how she managed to ensnare him so completely, so incredibly.

 

“You didn’t _do_ anything,” He always tells her.

 

It’s the biggest lie he’s ever told.

 

(and the truth that rests closest to his heart.)

____

 

_He is a tornado wrapped in an earthquake during a famine and a plague, he is all of earth's natural disasters in one.  He is Man and Wolf, immortal and beast. He thinks he can have everything._

 

_He is all take, only take._

____

 

She continues to ignore him, day after week after month.

 

“Someone moved into that old mansion, you know the one?” Elena will tell her.

 

“There is something wrong in the air, can you feel it?” Matt will tell her.

 

“I’m so on edge, I thought I saw him wandering around town today, but that’s crazy, right?” Stephan will tell her.

 

She doesn’t say a thing.

____

 

Elijah turns up at her house.

 

“Hello, Ms. Forbes. I’m here to inquire about my brother.”

 

She slams the door in his face.

 

_this isn’t right this doesn’t feel-_

____

 

He throws stones up at her window.

 

“This is a new low.”

 

His grin is electric.

 

“And here I was, thinking it was romantic.”

 

It is. But she doesn’t tell him.

 

Doesn’t tell him about how many nights she spends sleepless, afraid that he will creep into her subconscious, doesn’t tell him how she wants him to be _bold._ To say what he wants outright like he used to, when he demanded and claimed and laid everything bare for her to see.

 

Back then she knew where she stood. Now, nothing was certain.

 

“Not tonight, Klaus. Not tonight.”

 

No teeth, no bite or growl or snarl.

 

Polite nod, and “Perhaps tomorrow, then.”

____

 

He shows up, every night, below her window.

 

She ignores him.

 

Until,

 

“I never told you, why I’m here.”

 

He knows she’s listening.

 

“Not that you gave me much opportunity to inform you, but I guess I should have known better. Should have known it would never be easy.”

 

“you’re-"

 

She looks down at him, on his back, eyes closed, breathing easy.

 

“Klaus, don’t.”

 

He looks back up at her.

____

 

He pushed the door back open.

 

“I’m afraid I must insist.”

____

 

She was the one thing he didn’t _need_ to have, the one thing he _wanted_.

 

(But he never really needed _anything._ So that whole statement doesn’t carry much weight now, does it?)

____

 

“I don’t want to know.”

 

“Why? Afraid I might tell you the truth?”

____

 

“Caroline, my brother, Niklaus, he’s-”

 

She looks back at this man, who’s steal eyes have turned molten.

 

“No, he’s not.”

____

 

They are both laying down on the grass, not quite side by side. The air that surrounds them would bite into their skin with cold, if things were different.

 

He doesn’t say anything, not when he finds her there waiting for him, not when she turns her head and pats the ground next to her, not when she tells him,

 

“You know, sometimes, when you’re around, I feel like I’m being followed by a ghost.”

 

He does not bother to look ashamed.

 

“That day, in the woods? I took a chance on you, on me and the possible Us a hundred, a thousand years down the line. But I didn’t stop to consider what would happen if you came back too soon, if you didn’t stay away like you promised.”  


“I trust you too much, I think.”

 

He rolls onto his side, his eyes trace the planes of her face, of her legs, her arms.

 

He looks like he is remembering.

 

“I’ve asked for your loyalty, plenty of times, love, but I don’t think I have ever done you the honor of telling you that you have mine. Completely and utterly, I am loyal to you.”

 

“Never doubt it.”

 

She looks back at him, at his eyes that are shining like the sun reflected off the moon, at the precision of his jaw and the soft heart that resides deep deep down behind ribs that refuse to break.

 

This fragile man, this fragile creature.

 

They fall asleep.

____

 

She is waiting for him to breathe in.

 

(He’s not breathing not moving)

 

She reaches out to brush her hand against his cheek-

 

His eyes flicker open, “I’m so sorry, love.”

 

-Below her fingertips, there is no skin, no feeling, it is like the air has been compressed, like there is something there, pushing back and she just can’t _touch_ -

 

“I’m so sorry.”

____

 

“Is he a ghost?”

 

Elijah, in her house, drinking out of her mother’s fine china tea cups, commiserating the appearence his psychopathic brother, is an image she never wanted to have in her head.

 

“I don’t believe so.”

 

“Then what is he?”

 

There wasn’t anything to tell him, all Caroline could say was that she had seen him and-

 

“He’s adrift. And I think he is holding on to whatever he can.”

 

And that was all that was said.

____

 

This Klaus is all the things the other Klaus wasn’t.

 

This Klaus was quiet when he should be bold, careless when he should be careful.

 

This Klaus didn’t generate whispers wherever he walked, not like the old Klaus who used to command a room like an army. Tell everyone where to look and when.

 

She doesn’t know if she is allowed to miss him.

 

(She doesn’t. She does.)

____

 

“How is this supposed to work?”

 

The bastard had the nerve to look smug.

 

“Depends on what you mean by ‘this’ love.”

____

 

He’s not a ghost.

 

He’s not _anything_.

 

He is here and not here and gone but remaining. He is the second before and after a sound, the thing that flickers into the peripheral vision. He is empty space, pushing atoms aside with nothing to occupy them.

 

He is an impossibility.

 

(But he always was one.)

 

She’s losing her mind.

____

 

“Sometimes, it’s the wind moving the leaves that does it.”

 

Klaus, he is laying-not-laying on the ground beside her. They are staring up at the trees, the slowly turning fall leaves, and pretending that time is speeding up around them, that life is passing them by.

 

“It?”

 

She didn’t need to ask.

 

“Makes me _desire_ , makes me _grieve_ for all the things I no longer have.”

 

“Everyone feels that way sometimes, after things change.”

 

“I know, love. I know. But it’s the wind that does it.”

 

Caroline just looks down at their hands and their fingertips that refuse to touch.

 

( _She understands_.)

 

The sun comes up and he disappears.

____

 

The winter cold sets in, sudden and brutal, the way it always does.

 

She spends the day without him, the nights missing him.

 

(All she does is miss him.)

 

He is gone like a memory, like an imaginary friend.

 

He is absent from the air in her lungs, from the blood in her heart.

 

Gone.

 

He’s gone.

____

 

This, all of it, is beginning to feel like a nightmare.

____

 

She is raking the leaves into piles, slow and organized and tired.

 

“Bonnie.”

 

It’s a sigh, it’s a whimper.

 

“Bonnie.”

 

“Caroline.”

 

“It’s Klaus.”

 

“Isn’t it always? Always something.” And she continues to rake the leaves, now more hurried, more rushed.

 

“He’s not here. Not really.”

 

The raking stops.

 

“That’s not my problem.”

 

And the raking continues.

____

 

“He’s gone. He’s gone and it hurts way more than it should.”

 

“How much should it hurt, exactly?”

____

 

“All he ever wanted was to _live_.”

 

“No, he didn’t, Caroline. He wanted power, he wanted loyalty and immortality. None of that counts as the basis for living.”

 

“I know that.”

 

Stefan sighs, “Do you? Remember the cruelty and the monstrous rage. Remember the ways he made each of us suffer.”

 

“Absence does not erase wrongs, it does not sanctify. It should not. Mourn him if you want, Caroline, love him if you want. But mourn and love the entirety of him, you aren’t doing him any favors by forgetting the bad parts.

 

“Love doesn’t go halfway.”

____

 

It is hard to say when it started.

 

But not in the way of it not being easy. In the way of not being quite sure. In the way of not trusting. In the way that it is difficult to make the words migrate from their home in the throat to the new location of the mouth.

 

It is difficult to say.

 

It’s hard.

 

Because when things start, it is implied that things end.

 

So it’s better not to say at all.

 

_Where has he gone how could he go why didn’t he stay?_

____

 

Then spring comes and it’s like he never left.

____

 

She looks at him. Really looks at him.

 

(And like all the cliches, she sees something different.)

 

“Why are you here, Klaus? Why are you here?”

 

She is old and tired and _hopeful_.

 

 _You._ He wants to say. _I will always be there, whenever you need me._

 

“Where else do I have to go?”

____

 

She’s in her bedroom.

 

He’s there too, the echo.

 

There is a cavern of silence between them.

 

The winter’s frost has melted but it still has her frozen over.

 

She wants to ask him to leave.

 

She wants to ask him to stay.

 

She wants to ask him why,

 

and how.

 

He wants her.

 

The room is filled with silence.

 

It should be filled with two quite heartbeats, four lungs inhaling, bed sheets and floorboards and curtains crinkling and creaking and ruffling.

 

(Why is that?

            Why is that?)

 

She looks at him and says,

 

“Why does it always feel like we are trapped by time?”

 

“ _Why is it always the wrong time?_ ”

 

And he looks at her and says, “We have forever to get the timing right.”

 

She’s not sure if that’s true.

 

____

 

They are supposed to be permanent fixtures of time, the earth is supposed to bend to their will

 

_He is a patch of scorched earth, a forest alight, a painful memory, something to recover from._

 

____

 

Somewhere, somehow, they were supposed to fit.

 

_She is a lighthouse, carefully guiding ships away from her during dangerous storms. Cutting through the darkness with a blaze of hope and starlight._

 

_Always warning not to get too close. She loves each ship that passes her by._

 

_They pass her by._

 

____

 

“A long time ago, you tried to tell me something.”

 

_Why is it always the night that brings him? Why is he here but not? Why does none of this feel right?_

 

“Are you ready, sweetheart?”

____

 

She forgives him, she’s not quite sure what for, but she forgives him.

____

 

She is asleep, and he is waiting for her to wake up

 

Leaning over her bed, hovering his face next to hers.

 

_Wake up._

____

 

“Care! You’ll never believe who I saw-”

____

 

“Wake up.”

____

 

“-Just wandering around town-”

____

 

_Wake up_

____

 

“I can barely believe it!”

____

 

_“Caroline.”_

____

 

“Klaus Mikaelson.”

____

 

She opens her eyes.

 

“Been asleep a long time, love.”

____

 

A nightmare, a daydream, something between the ghost of a memory and the real thing.

 

“Cursed.” He says.

 

And then things make sense, finally.

 

_Finally._

____

 

“You didn’t need a hero.”

 

“I know. But I still needed you..”

____

 

_She is a beacon of light, a signal fire, a flare._

 

(She is so happy so happy someone _saw_ someone _came_ -)

 

_He is a warning, a threat, the storm that tears up the foundations and uproots trees._

 

(He saved her he saved her he saved her. They are both alive and he is so happy.)

____

 

She reaches for his hand.

 

They hold on tight.

____

 

It’s morning.

 

They are both lying in the grass.

 

“Is this Real?” She asks.

 

They are holding each other.

 

“It’s Real.”

 

“What if it’s not, what if all of this is a dream?”

 

“Then it will be a glorious dream.”

 

“What if it hurts to wake up?”

 

“Then we will keep on sleeping.”

 

“Forever?”

 

“For as long as we can.”

 

“If this is Real, won’t it hurt?”

 

“Sometimes, when things are Real, you don’t mind being hurt.”

 

“I think it would be okay.”

“What?”

 

“If this hurt. I think it would be okay.”

 

And they drifted off, together.

 

____

  


A park bench, this time drenched in sunlight.

 

Two people are sitting there, smiling at each other.

Not talking.

 

No, just sitting there.

 

Soaking up the warmth.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Oh I so so hope you like this. I've been working on it for months and I don't know what to do anymore.
> 
> Please comment! It makes everything worth it.
> 
> My tumblr is https://insertcaffeinehere.tumblr.com if you wanna message me or something idk


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